May Day - m'aidez

M'Aidez

"Help Me" was translated as a universal call to help

but written in English as "May Day"

Does labour need help? Too many jobs are being turned into part time without enough hours for benefits - two part time jobs may provide a full time income but they won't provide benefits including a retirement plan. Meanwhile the foreign worker program recruits workers from elsewhere where, in many cases, they work under abusive conditions and everywhere skew the labour market. 

The Green Party's Principle 1.8, which I read before taking part in the Regina May Day parade with several other Greens, has an extensive preamble of which several points stand out:

·      The National Work-Life Conflict Study (quoted in the Green Vision) was done in 2001 and showed that all working Canadians were spending longer hours at work, doing more overtime and experiencing more stress in their lives. Work-life stress adds an estimated $5 billion to Canada's health care costs[i]. I don’t think that the environment has changed much since it was published.

·      The Harper administration removed the office of the Status of Women Canada AND a stipulation for pay equity within the federal civil service.

·      By following the USA to the bottom, Canada falls behind progressive labour standards in Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Finland where higher average pay and longer holidays produce lower rates of unemployment and less petty crime.

·      While acknowledging that the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) might fill the need for some replacement workers especially in professional and highly skilled areas, the Green Party believes that it is essentially flawed and open to much abuse. 

Growing up as a farmer’s daughter and becoming a professional, I spent little time personally as a labourer – I don’t think a stint as a cocktail waitress qualifies. But as a doctor, I’ve cared for many. When I first went to work in Wynyard, I was stunned to discover that people working long hours at hard work in the chicken plant had only one week of holidays plus their birthday for the first year, two weeks of holidays thereafter.

What does the Green Party support? 

Raising the minimum wage to $15 and ending the current Temporary Foreign Worker Program both make sense. The TFWP funding would be converted into a domestic recruitment program – where, since the minimum wage would now be a liveable wage, youth and other willing Canadians would more likely be enticed to the market.

Since research shows that people are healthier and more productive with four weeks of holiday per year, the Green Party wimped out stating that it supports three weeks. I don’t think that we should stop at three when we know that four is needed!

No doubt that we should establish in law the rights to equal pay for work of equal value. To the point about offering tax incentives for companies providing on-site daycare, healthy food and bike or public transport commutes, I would add having on-site health advisors.

Workers should know their rights. To that end, all places of employment are supposed to display a flyer outlining workers’ rights. Unfortunately, we need a law that imposes the same for federally-regulated work sites.

In the Green Party’s list of principles are many that require new regulations or new regulatory bodies. Both industry and labour already feel “regulated to death”. As we move into a future with more sustainable and conversion-to-green employment, we need to look at ways in which workers can be more involved in setting the safety standards – health, equity, hours, etc - of their work places.

One sign in the May Day march said, “The world is run by workers; workers should run the world.” As the Occupy Wall Street movement showed, uniting intellectuals, professionals, workers and farmers would not be easy but it would be necessary to shift the "running of the world" away from Wall Street and billionaires. 

It is my belief that we can unite around a greater threat - climate chaos.

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[i][i]A long but enlightening read found at http://publications.gc.ca/collections/Collection/H72-21-186-2001-1E.pdf